Molecular Identification of Korean Bred Apple Cultivars with Microsatellite Markers

Among many DNA markers, simple sequence repeat (SSR) marker developed and widely used for evident gene identification and cultivar discrimination. We developed SSR fingerprints for identification of twenty-four apple cultivars released from Korea since 1988. For identification of those twenty-four Korean apple cultivars, both 300 SSR markers which were reported in HiDRAS (High-quality Disease Resistant Apples for a Sustainable Agriculture) and 210 SSR markers which were pre-screened from our project (Biogreen 21 program of Rural Development Administration, Korea) based on ‘Golden Delicious’ full sequencing database, were selected. Data were taken through Fragment analyzer (Advanced Analytical, USA) and changed into proper formats for application of data by using PRO Size 2.0 software. Consequently, twenty pairs of preselected SSR primers were used for the analysis of a total of twenty-four apple cultivars from Korea. These primer pairs amplified 80 alleles with an average 11.4 allele per primer pair and an average of polymorphic information content was 0.8. The range of allele size (bp) was from 44 to 275. Those results showed genetic relationship by classification method within twenty-four cultivars. The approach described here could be applied to monitoring of Korean apple cultivars and adapting to apple breeding program.